


Burst

by Vacillhate



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Original Character Death(s), Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-31
Updated: 2012-10-31
Packaged: 2017-11-17 11:55:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/551277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vacillhate/pseuds/Vacillhate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karkat needs someone to talk to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burst

Locking a bubble is difficult. By the nature of their making and the nature of the low level psychic energy innate to the troll race, memories are changeable, permeable, and exposed. And the more emotionally intense and psychologically vivid the dream impression, the harder it is to contain it. It takes a firm mastery of dream mechanics, a strong will, and a good handle on psychic energy to control even a single bubble. It's an exercise better suited to a Witch or Seer, but there's been a Maid known to conduct the flow of bubble memories effortlessly, so there's nothing to say a Knight shouldn't be able to keep his own out of the reach of general accessibility. 

He's practiced on a few smaller memories and had some success. With the larger memories, things are a little harder. He's found if he concentrates everything he has on blocking even his own access to the memory, the bubble's permeability decreases eventually. It's exhausting work, and the locks wear thin after a time, but it's not as though he lacks for time to spend weary and concentrating on hiding away everything he can. It doesn't matter how small; any part of him is more than just a part, it's a feeling and it's a being that no one else needs to understand.

Today he's working on a small one, relatively, at least. Hiding the bubble involves experiencing the bubble, so he finds himself not in a corner of an old lab he's tried to make seem like his own, but instead in the familiar and comfortable environment of his wigglerhood hive. It's a little worn in places, extremely clean, and filled with the sharp salty smell of a fresh kill just dragged in. It makes his chest cavity throb in a way he can't dwell on without risking breaking open his other carefully guarded memories.

Besides, this memory doesn't take place indoors, and doesn't involve any one else who may or may not have once resided with him in the hive. It only starts in his culinary block, once he sees the crowd of onlookers gathering down the residential thoroughfare. It's only late dusk -- he hasn't even had time to wash the slime out of his hair -- so a voyeuristic crowd gathering on a neighbor's hivestem can only mean one thing, and that thing is a particularly interesting death.

He takes the chance to go see for himself, keeping to the back of the crowd with a low profile. He only gets a glimpse of the corpse. This part of the memory is less clear; he can't remember what the fatal wound looked like, or what kind of weapon was used to deal it. It was the first corpse he'd ever seen up close. The last time a neighbor had been culled, it had been cleaned up by the time he'd had a chance to try and see.

What he remembers more clearly is afterward, how everyone would call it another culling. His neighbor (he's not even positive he remembers her name; something with an N and a couple of ooh sounds, the way you get with livestock lusii) hadn't ever walked quite right, but it had clearly been getting worse for the past sweep or so. Might as well call it a culling, even if she'd seen fit to do it to herself before any drone had come for her. It was inevitable either way.

What he really remembers was how angry he was with her, for weeks, maybe even months after. He'd barely ever spoken to Nuh-something, didn't know anything about her other than that she was rust and lived a few hives over had some kind of defect she'd hidden poorly enough. He should have been relieved she'd had the decency not to draw unwanted attention to the area.

But he was angry. She wasn't the most obvious cull-bait he'd ever seen. Sure, the idea she'd make it more than another sweep or so was laughable, but that didn't mean she should just abandon all hope and roll over and remove her windtube with a serrated edge. And she was _rust_ , which was next to nothing but it still wasn't nothing. She hadn't had the decency to so much as try.

He shutters the memory with a metaphorical (but also physical, dream bubbles are needlessly confusing) slam of a door, and is surprised by how exhausted he finds himself over the effort he expended on what should have been a trivial bubble. But he's found his thoughts going back to her a little more often lately.

He'd been such a stupid, conceited little snot back then, hating her for a decision not to desperately struggle against the inevitabilities of her birth for as many sweeps as she could wring out through sheer determination and stubbornness. That had been his plan for how to face up to a life of being a freak far less obviously but far more critically, who didn't have a liquid runny shit's chance at making it past his eighth sweep. And then in the end all of his inevitabilities were inevitable after all and his past self's hatred of a girl who knew better than he did just seems like a pupa move.

He's really trying to be a better person and not such a loathsome, miserable shit to be around, and though it doesn't seem to be working as well as he'd hoped, in that interest he doesn't let himself entertain the thought of how many lives would have changed if he'd had the shame globes to show his essential organs the business end of a mercy cull. But he wants someone to talk to or else his confusion of what the actual purpose of any of this is when living seems to mean being hated by everyone and being jealous of the way his dead alternate selves don't have to care anymore and never seem to be alone is going to bubble up like emotional metaphorical or perhaps literal or perhaps dream bubble meta-litera-phorical hysterical vomit. And there's only one person in the world who'd give a single gaping asshole's worth of a damn about his pathetic problems.

CCG: HEY.  
CCG: ARE YOU THERE?  
CCG: I ACTUALLY CAN'T BELIEVE I'M ASKING THAT.  
CCG: OBVIOUSLY YOU'RE THERE, AT SOME POINT AT LEAST.  
CCG: THERE ISN'T ANYTHING ELSE OUT THERE YOU COULD BE OUT DOING.  
CCG: IT'S NOT AS THOUGH YOU HAVE ANYONE ELSE TO TALK TO.  
CCG: JUST SWEEPS OF UNDULATING SQUID GODS, HAPPY INTERSPECIES COUPLES, CREEPY BLANK-EYED DEAD FRIENDS, AND US.  
CCG: OR MAYBE YOU'VE FINALLY GOTTEN TOO TIRED OF ME TO BOTHER WITH THIS PATHETIC CHARADE.  
CCG: I CAN'T SAY I'D BLAME YOU.  
CCG: I'M TIRED OF ME TOO.  
CCG: THE THING IS I ACTUALLY REALLY NEED SOMEONE TO TALK TO.  
CCG: COULD YOU ANSWER?

He sits and stares at the screen, waiting for a response. He stares until his chest feels like it's going to burst, as though his core is a memory he hasn't locked down properly, and then a few grey lines of text appear on his screen in a new message notification.

PCG: HEY.  
PCG: ARE YOU THERE? 

He slams the husktop into off position before he can read anymore. It's not even an hour later that the protections around the memory abruptly burst.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a prompt I wound up doing something else with. Will probably post that eventually, too, because evidently I can never get enough sad Karkats.


End file.
